


all we can do

by escapismandsharpobjects



Category: Young Wallander (TV)
Genre: Carry/Support, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s01e06 Bomb, Explosions, F/M, Gen, Minor Character Death, Shock, Whumptober 2020, kind of canon compliant idk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:54:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27035998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/escapismandsharpobjects/pseuds/escapismandsharpobjects
Summary: whumptober day 15 - prompt: carry/support (alt no.15). the night after the explosion and hemberg's death, kurt is numb. until he isn't.
Relationships: Kurt Wallander & Jasmine, Kurt Wallander & Reza Al-Rahman, Reza Al-Rahman/Jasmine
Comments: 11
Kudos: 26
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	all we can do

**Author's Note:**

> hi i will be honest this is not my best work but oh well lol. anyway i was very sad that there wasn't really any proper aftermath of the explosion so this is me fixing it. i'm not sure if this is canon compliant or not bc the show isn't great with like, letting us know how much time has passed so idk. but whatever time doesn't really matter who cares lmao. hope you enjoy i guess?

Kurt is numb. His ears haven’t stopped ringing since the explosion. He’s still covered in dust and small pieces of debris. He sees the people around him cry, but finds himself incapable. He doesn’t feel anything. He’s running on autopilot.

His autopilot leads him to a bar, where he sinks down onto a stool and drinks and doesn’t even register the people around him staring and whispering. 

He drinks and drinks and he doesn’t know why. Maybe he wants the alcohol to keep him numb. Maybe he’s hoping it’ll tear down enough of his internal defenses that the pain of reality will come screaming back. 

Whatever his intentions might have been, he winds up drunk out of his mind with a bartender threatening to throw him out. He doesn’t want to leave. There are people here. If he leaves, he will be alone with himself, and he thinks that that is a remarkably bad idea at the moment.

But the bartender keeps insisting that he leave. That he’s had enough to drink. Finally, he asks if there’s someone he can call, and Kurt thinks, of course, of Reza.

His friend picks up on the first ring, asking him something like,  _ are you all right?  _

“No, I’m smashed,” Kurt says. He thinks that’s kind of funny, for reasons he can’t explain. He laughs. “I’m so fucking drunk, Rez.”

He hears Reza say something, muffled. Then he hears Jasmine’s voice reply. “Hi, Jasmine,” he calls, and the bartender snaps at him to be quieter.

“Hey, Kurt,” Jasmine says, sounding subdued. 

“Did you hear Hemberg got blown up?” he asks, because he knows she has. 

“I did,” she says, and then Reza is back speaking to him. “I’m comin’ to get you, alright?”

He nods, and then says, “yeah,” when his alcohol-soaked brain reminds him that he can’t be seen over the phone. He hangs up, and then just sits there. 

He stares at the ground, watching Gustav Munck’s car explode, hearing his own voice yell to Hemberg, over and over again, until a hand on his shoulder jolts him out of his memories.

Reza is standing there, and there’s this terrible look on his face and for a second Kurt tries to think of why, and then remembers. “It’s so sad, isn’t it,” he says. “One second, you’re there, and then...boom. Just like that, Rez.  _ Boom.” _ The car explodes again. He tastes smoke. 

Reza flinches a little at Kurt’s words. “You’re drunk, Kurt,” he says. “Come with me.”

“I  _ am  _ drunk,” Kurt replies. “I’m drunk and I can’t feel  _ anything, _ Rez.  _ Nothing.” _

“I know. Let’s get you up, yeah?”

And then Reza’s arm is under his own, and he’s being lifted to his feet. The sudden change in position makes him dizzy, and he nearly collapses, saved only by Reza’s arm around him. 

The walk out of the bar is extremely difficult. Kurt barely does any work at all, fully supported by Reza, who is half-dragging him along. All the while, Kurt is talking about Hemberg, Munck, the explosion, in a neverending circle, and all the while, the car explodes in front of him, and smoke fills his field of vision.

The car ride is silent. Kurt is staring out the window without seeing anything but flames. Reza is avoiding looking over at his best friend, hating what he knows he’ll see. Kurt’s in shock, he’d recognized that the second he’d called. Kurt can’t feel anything, and he’s too drunk to understand the words he’s saying, which are belaying how he feels under the layers of alcohol and shock. 

Reza pulls to a stop at his house and opens the passenger door, but Kurt remains in his seat. Reza can’t tell if he looks worse than he did in the bar, or if it’s just the light from the car illuminating how badly he’s looked all this time: caked in residue from the explosion, because he’d refused to go to the hospital. Pale as hell, because his boss is dead, because he hasn’t caught the man responsible. Half-asleep, because he’d decided to go get drunk instead of do something as reasonable as  _ reach out.  _

He pulls Kurt gently out of the car, hearing the other man make a faint, unconscious noise of pain, the first indication that he’s in  _ any  _ kind of pain at all. Reza looks him over worriedly, checking for any injury that Kurt had somehow not realized he’d gotten.

Sure enough, there’s a splotch of red slowly seeping through his shirt. “You’re bleeding, man, you know that?” Reza asks, sure that the answer will be no.

“I dunno,” says Kurt. “Don’t feel anything.”

“Can you walk?”

“I dunno,” is Kurt’s answer, again. 

“If you’re not walking, I swear I’ll throw you over my shoulder and carry you inside,” Reza says, intending to say it as a threat.

It’s clearly not received that way. “Okay,” Kurt says, and he makes no move to stand.

Reza sighs briefly before reaching down and picking Kurt up, trying to be mindful of whatever injury he has. He carries Kurt up to the front door, and wonders, vaguely, if he’s always been this light.

He opens the door with the hand not holding onto Kurt, then shuffles inside and into the living room, setting Kurt down on the couch carefully. 

Jasmine comes out of their room then, gasping aloud when she sees the man on her couch. “Kurt,” she says, softly, and goes to sit down next to him, putting a hand on his smudged cheek. 

“He’s been like this since...since the explosion?” she asks, turning to Reza. 

“Wouldn’t let anyone touch him,” Reza confirms. “He’s in shock, I think. Says he can’t feel anything.”

“He’s bleeding.”

“It doesn’t hurt,” Kurt interrupts. “Hi, Jasmine. Good to see you.”

She gives him a sad smile. “Hi, Kurt.”

Reza comes and sits down on his other side, reaching out to remove Kurt’s jacket, and then his shirt.

“What’re you doing?” Kurt questions.

“Figuring out why you’re bleeding,” is Reza’s reply, and Kurt lapses into silence.

“It doesn’t hurt,” he repeats, after a moment of Reza poking around a thankfully-not-too-deep shrapnel wound. “It doesn’t hurt, Reza, why doesn’t it hurt?”

Reza stops what he’s doing and looks into Kurt’s face, seeing emotion there for the first time. His eyes are wet with as-yet-unshed tears, and although his statements are to the contrary, he looks so incredibly  _ pained. _

“It doesn’t hurt because you’re in shock,” Reza explains gently, as Jasmine takes over tending to his wound. Kurt looks at the floor. The car has stopped exploding, but still, all he can smell is smoke. 

“Can you make it stop?” he asks, not really sure what it is he’s referring to. 

“You’ll come out of it on your own,” Reza says, wishing he could say something more comforting. “Dunno if you’ll feel better when you do.”

Jasmine finishes bandaging his wound, and for a moment the three of them just sit there, Reza’s hand on Kurt’s back, Jasmine’s hand in his hair. 

“Would you mind if we cleaned you up?” Jasmine asks, pulling a piece of  _ something  _ out of Kurt’s hair. 

Kurt shrugs. He doesn’t care. He pokes at the newly-bandaged gash in his stomach, wishing that he could feel it. Reza’s hand pulls him away from that particular task, and he feels Jasmine stand up on his other side. 

She returns after a second, and then there’s a warm washcloth rubbing gently against his face and another one dragging across his torso. Slowly, they begin to take away the smell of smoke that’s been following him all day, and by the time they’ve finished, he feels  _ different. _

Less drunk, for one. Cleaner, for another. But the most notable change is the sudden stab of pain in his stomach. 

“I can feel it now,” he says, feeling his voice shake. “Oh god, I feel it,” he says, and then it’s not his voice shaking but his body, and he’s crying and whimpering and in a matter of seconds his world has gone from cold and numb to brutally hot and painful, and then he’s crying so hard that he stops making any noise at all, and all the while he feels hands on him, gentle and warm, rubbing his shoulders and touching his face. 

At some point, the pain reaches a crescendo, and Kurt almost pitches over from the force of the emotions that are pouring out of him unhindered. Before he can, though, an arm extends across his chest and another one grips his shoulders, both of them supporting him, keeping him upright. 

Reza and Jasmine hold onto Kurt as he breaks completely, and they keep holding on when he finally cries himself to sleep. They share a look over his head. 

“Poor guy,” is Reza’s only observation regarding Kurt. “What a way to go…” he adds, shaking his head. He can’t believe any of this. That Hemberg is really dead. That Kurt watched him die. That his killer is most likely never going to be brought to justice. 

“I can’t imagine,” Jasmine says. “And Kurt being there…” she trails off, reaching out to grab Reza’s hand. “How do we all get through this?”

“I don’t know,” Reza confesses. “We just have to be there, I think. Like you two were for me. It’s all we can do, really.”

Between them, Kurt makes a soft noise in his sleep, wrinkling up his face. Jasmine returns a gentle hand to his hair, in an effort to calm him down without waking him. Reza places a hand on his chest, feeling Kurt’s heart beat just slightly too fast.

“I’m so sorry, man,” he says quietly, and feels Jasmine lean over to press a kiss to his cheek. “I’m so sorry.”

**Author's Note:**

> i mean i know nobody will read this but like. if you did? thank you so much!!!! love u!


End file.
